12 September 2011

Review preview: Look Right Through Me

 Look Right Through Me
Malthouse Theatre and KAGE
9 September 2011
Merlyn Theatre, The Malthouse
to 18 September
www.malthousetheatre.com.au

"What lovelier hounour and influence could there be upon me than to see my work used in this way by an intelligent and prodigiously gifted new generation of artists. I think this is what's called a blessing."
Michael Leunig wrote this about physical theatre company KAGE's production of Look Right Through Me, a collaborative development between Leunig, Kate Denborough (director) and dancers Craig Bary, Fiona Cameron, Timothy Ohl, Cain Thompson, Gerard Van Dyck and, youngest member of the ensemble, Oscar Wilson.

The full review is on AussieTheatre.com and will be published here in a few days.

Sculpture: Sunflower seeds

Sunflower Seeds
Ai Weiwei


I don't see as much visual art as I would like to, but would have loved to see Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern earlier this year.

I discovered it while proofreading crossword puzzle clues. Even the dullest of jobs can lead to unexpected beauty.

What looks like a large pile of sunflower seeds is about 100 million individual porcelain sculptures, hand painted and hand fired by residents of the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. It took 1600 people two and a half years to make enough seeds.Sunflowers seeds have fed millions during famine in China and the flower was adopted by Mao Zedong as a symbol of his sunniness.

Sadly, very few people had the joy of interacting with the sculpture as the dust it produced was soon deemed health damaging.

Artist Ai Weiwei was the artistic consultant for Olympic Games Beijing National Stadium; he was also was arrested and detained by the Chinese government for three months this year for "economic crimes".

And check out Ebay to see what one of these tiny sculptures is worth.

11 September 2011

Review preview: Julius Caesar


Julius Caesar
Bell Shakespeare
7 September 2011
Fairfax Studio, the Arts Centre
to 17 September, and touring
www.bellshakespeare.com.au

Julius Caesar isn't the sexist of Shakespeare's writings. It's one of the politics and togas plays that's favoured in high schools for its large cast, relative shortness and the "lend me your rears" pun. Bell Shakespeare brave this neglected history play and bring it into a recognisable world of factions and power suits with many shades of grey.

JC is a wordy play about the power of words. Most of the action takes place off, so its success lies in making the on stage story about the decisions and dilemmas facing those reporting and those hearing.

The full review appears on AussieTheatre.com and will be published here in a few days.

Review: Tell them it rained too hard

Tell them that it rained too hard
Attic Erratic
2 September 2011
Studio Theatre, Gasworks Arts Park
to 10 September
www.atticerratic.com


While Platform Youth are confronting the perception of teenage sluts in Tenderness, independent company Attic Erratic give a very different 20-something view of the slut-or-virgin paradigm in Tell them that it rained too hard.

Tom Pitts wrote the text and music for this piece. The highlight of the night is how beautifully the music works with the text and how Pitts and director Celeste Cody use the combination of text and music to create the mood and move the drama of story.

But the text suffers from overwriting and seems caught up with telling us the sexual issues we should be thinking about, rather than showing us the stories of these characters, who never seem free to really tell us what's going on in their hearts.

As each generation discovers sex, they tend to act like no one did it before them. (I know I did.) This work claims to boldly explore the "contentious" and "still divisive" issues of sexuality, promiscuity and monogamy. It begins with a dream about harlots and a lecture about the free love of the 60s and how it people can't have an uncomplicated shag. But it doesn't go on to address issues of sexuality, promiscuity or monogamy.

I left thinking that the politics and outlook underpinning this world are just so straight. Straight as in heterosexual, straight as in conservative and straight as in as vanilla as cheap, white home-brand ice cream.

The promiscuous chick dresses like a Grey St hooker and has sex with two (!) men, while her best friend risks her nice safe marriage by having a pash with an ex. This may be a typicailish 20ish story, but it would be a far better story if it wasn't claiming to be unflinching and bold. If you're going to look at the issues around being a slut (a word that is slowly being re-claimed as a positive and empowering word) and how you can enjoy a fuck because it's fun, please at least glance at promiscuity (that's a LOT of partners) and the alternatives to monogamy that many people joyfully embrace.

Tell them that it rained too hard didn't speak to me, but it's driven by a cast whose honesty and passion for the story reminded me that it is reflection of the their world and it will speak loudly and strongly to others.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com



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10 September 2011

Review: Tenderness

Tenderness
Platform Youth Theatre and Footscray Community Arts Centre in association with A.R.A.B
4 September 2011
Footscray Community Arts Centre
to 11 September


I wish I were shocked by the anger, violence and cruelty of Tenderness. I'm horrified that any 12-year-old girl would shave her public hair and lose her virginity to a 16-year-old or that any teenager will punch until bones crunch, but it's too easy to understand why when the impact of words like "ugly" and "slut" never seems to change.

Platform Youth Theatre create striking theatre that is led by the perspectives and voices of young people, and finished and strengthened by the experience of professional artists.

 Tenderness is two short plays, Ugly by Christos Tsiolkas (The Slap etc) and Slut by Patricia Cornelius (Do not go gentle... etc). Commissioned in 2007, both were researched with young people in the northern suburbs and have undergone creative development presentations that have left them with authentic raw and angry young voices, without the implied judgment or now-I-know-betterness of the older writers.

Working with a remarkable young cast (Matt Hickey, Stephanie Capiron, Rebecca Mazel, Peta Sergeant) and Kelly Ryall's emotive score, director Nadja Kostich (Bare Witness) uses a constant and dangerous physicality that lets the scripts confront, scream and punch to show the vulnerability of these young people who see the world as ugly and pretend that they don't care.

As adults we can re-embrace words, take part in Slut Walk and happily have as much wild, skanky and consenting sex as we like, but do we or should we apply the same openness to promiscuous teenagers? I wish that everyone who has ever referred to a child as a slut (especially "journalists" and talk-back radio scum) could be made to see this play every time they throw such powerful words about.

Tenderness is the first work in the new performance space at the wonderful Footscray Community Arts Centre, and if this stark reminder of how little tenderness some teenagers have in their lives is setting the standard for what we will see in this space, it hope it will soon be one of Melbourne's favourite spaces


This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com


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Review: Flowerchildren

Flowerchildren:the Mamas and Papas Story
Magnomos
Theatre Works
1 September 2011
to 10 September


I don't think there's a seat left for Flowerchildren. It's worth ringing and trying for no-shows, because this mix of nostalgia, honesty and revelation is a show you won't forget.

I'm not a fan of the jukebox/tribute musicals, but working with the Magnormos team, writer Peter Fitzpatrick has taken all that he knows about great musicals (he's directed five Sondheim's) to create one that is loving, painful and wonderful.

I'm a product of the 60s, and have always loved The Mamas and Papas's music with those close harmonies that speak of love, but are underpinned with a melancholy that draws you deeply into the heart and truth of the song.

Their music is still glorious, but Flowerchildren reminds us that it was a product of many no-so-nice stories. Older John married teenage Michelle, Cass never got over her brief relationship with Denny, John never accepted Cass for her size, each had health-threatening addictions and Denny and Michelle has an affair. Underpinning their fame and sudden money, it was unhappiness, anger and drugs, that led Phillips to write some of their greatest hits.

The story is told in four parts, each narrated from point of view of one of the members, starting with Cass when she decided in join the group and ending with Michelle, who's the only member still alive. It also leaves their stories in the 60s and leaves Michelle to tell what she wants to about their deaths. Some of the urban myths are debunked and other more damaging accusations, particularly about John, are left for Oprah and the tabloids.

Flowerchildren succeeds where so many tribute pieces fail because the narrative is inseparable from the music and it uses the truth of their personal relationships. Phillips freely used his music to express his how he felt. In the early days, his "Words of Love" were for Michelle, "Creeque Alley's" "no one's getting fat except Mama Cass" still feels mean and the pain of Denny's "genius" mistake in "I saw her again" was recreated every performance to ensure that Denny remembered just how much he hurt John.

Working with the spot-on design (Christina Longan-Bell and Emma Kennedy), Aaron Joyner's direction captures the mood of the flower power, hippy movement of the late 60s.  It was a time of hope and new beginnings, but he doesn't let us see it with mass-produced fashion-conscious rose-coloured glasses.

Sophie Thomas's musical direction captures the unique sound of this group so well that it feels so close to seeing them live that it's easy to forget that we're not in San Francisco in 1967, and their recorded eight-part harmonies are re-created by using a mirror ensemble of four (Tim Carney, Jessica Featherby, Jack Feehan, Zuleika Khan).

And the cast couldn't be more perfect. Laura Fitzpatrick (Mama Michelle) brings the complexity that is so often missed in discussions of pretty Michelle, Matt Hetherington (Papa John) isn't scared of John's demons, Dan Humphris (Papa Denny) isn't scared of Denny's cowardice and Casey Donovan (Mama Cass) shows how Cass hid her pain, and masters Cass's dance style.

Flowerchildren will get another season. It's so good that it has to be seen more and must find it's way to the homeland of this group.


This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com

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06 September 2011

MELBOURNE FRINGE HINTS 8: Puppets and Letters

Apparently the cool puppet-based shows just use letters as titles.  And now there are only 24 titles left.

X
Terrible Comfort


Promising zombie pirates, steampunk robots, monsters of the deep and an epic skeleton army sword battle, X is already far more interesting than many Fringe shows. And there are fluffy critters and its about a pirate battling with rum. 

Presented by experimental puppet company Terrible Comfort, the artistic collaboration of MTC playwright Robert Reid and visual artist Sayraphim Lothian, and Barking Spider Theatre X features more SM favourites like Penelope Bartlau and Hayley Butcher, so it's gotta be cool. 

U
Peepshow Inc at Signal


Peepshow Inc have created some of the most gorgeous puppet theatre I've seen. 

U is an opportunity for 13 to 18-year olds to create and work with Peepshow in a series of workshops and interactive performances at the City of Melbourne's Signal space.

Workshop and performance info is here. If you don't book, you'll miss out.



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05 September 2011

Sluts at the theatre

Tell them that it rained too hard
Attic Erratic
2 September 2011
Studio Theatre, Gasworks  Arts Park
to 10 September

Tenderness
4 September 2011
Footscray Community Arts Centre
to 11 September


Attic Erratic and Platform Youth start with the word slut and show us how this word has such conflicting definitions and still has the power to cause a lot of pain.

One show left me feeling like an old slut who wanted to give the cast boxes of condoms so that they could have some fun, the other left me feeling like an old fart wanting to protect young girls and wishing that that sex wasn't such a part of their lives.

Both reviews appear on AussieTheatre.com and will be published here in a few days


Help send MKA to Canberra

How do great shows get seen?

Well, they need money and the only way wonderful companies like MKA can get money is if people like us help them out.

MKA are taking 22 Short Plays to our capital and they'd like to get there without having to sell their stuff to Cash Converters.


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MELBOURNE FRINGE HINTS 7: Well Made Plays

With all the cutting edge, quirkiness and contemporary cliches applied to Fringe shows, there are still old school plays based on scripts that believe in structure.

Vicious Fish Theatre


A couple have a new bed and each will invite a stranger to inaugurate it.

Fourplay by Catalan-Spanish playwright Sergi Belbel is the fourth play in Vicious Fish's four-play Bebel Project and director Scott Gooding continues to bring us work that challenges traditional structures.

Like architects, writers who reject structure likely to fail. Those who experiment with it can soar above the throng or splat to earth when their story and characters get lost in the cleverness of the telling.

Fourplay has 38 scenes that alternate between advancing the action and taking it back, and each is played twice to force the audience to challenge their perceptions. It could be fascinating.


Since we're talking about structure, Ibsen has to come into the conversation about well-made plays.

If you haven't read Ibsen, what are you doing reading a theatre blog? Get ye to the library or the book section of any op shop now.

Director Daniel Schlusser is recreating this Dollhouse as a contemporary domestic horror and describes is as "a daring theatricalisation of Nora's mental landscape".

I've missed Schlusser's recent re-imaginings of classic plays, but reviewers I trust and respect have raved about them. That's enough to get me along.

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04 September 2011

MELBOURNE FRINGE HINTS 6: Musicals

Spring Awakening
MUST, MSA & MAPA



Spring Awakening won a pile of Tony Awards in 2007 and the original cast recording has earned a regular place on my car CD player.

Using a once-banned German play from 1892 and juxtaposing a rock soundtrack from the angry and hurt hearts of its teenage characters, this show made stars of its cast (some of whom are now in Glee) and   is pushing Grease off its perch as favourite musical about teenagers.

This production is director Yvonne Virsik's first musical. Yvonne's direction brings out the subtext and emotional core of writing and she guides inexperienced performers to remarkable performances. As the story of Spring Awakening is in the book and the emotion is in the music, I think she'll bring something unexpected and new to musical direction.

You have to leave the Fringe zone and go to Monash Uni at Clayton to see this, but there's heaps of easy parking and a bus to the door.

Kiss of Death

Kiss of Death hasn't won anything yet, as this is its first run.

Inspired by screwball movies of the 1930s, it's described as a "new screwball rom-com cabaret musical about office romance at a financial services company obsessed by footy tipping".

With Spontaneous Broadway's John Thorn on the writing team, folk like Scott Brennan in the cast and Collette Mann doing the chorey, it's a good bet that it'll be worth getting to.


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Review preview: Flowerchildren

Flowerchildren:the Mamas and Papas Story
Magnomos
Theatre Works
1 September 2011
to 10 September


I don't think there's a seat left for Flowerchildren. It's worth ringing and trying for no-shows, because this mix of nostalgia, honesty and revelation is a show you won't forget.

I'm not a fan of the jukebox/tribute musicals, but working with the Magnormos team, writer Peter Fitzpatrick has taken all that he knows about great musicals (he's directed five Sondheim's) to create one that is loving, painful and wonderful.

The full review is on AussieTheatre.com  and will be up here in a few days.



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03 September 2011

MELBOURNE FRINGE HINTS 5: Cartwheel to the Circus

Melbourne has some of the best contemporary and community circuses around.  If it's in the Fringe circus program, it's probably fearless and fantastic.

Footscray's Women's Circus are bloody brilliant. Embracing difference and banishing the word limitations, this community company has changed lives – and they put on shows that share love and leave everyone feeling braver.

This show is the "wildly foolish antics of women who look good for their age but should know better!" Now, why does that appeal to me so much...



Anna Lumb's new show is inspired by rock idols, Broadway legends and cult figures. And local rockers and Fringe legends Maude and Anni Davey are directing. 

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